1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the management of users of software of computers, especially personal computers, and hardware including peripherals, along with providing services to users.
Computers, especially personal computers, have become very popular in various fields, and have been accompanied by an increasing demand for applicable software and peripherals. In the case of software it is required to provide support to users who have already purchased software for Example, by performing a debugging process, removing a failure, updating the version of the purchased software, etc. Thus, to recognize users who have already purchased specific computer-related products, user entries should be prepared and the demand of users for the services should be appropriately checked so that optimal services can be provided for the users and the vendors can acquire new business chances through such services.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, user registration for software and hardware can be made by each user returning by, mail, to a vendor a registration form attached to each product. The postage may have to be paid by users.
Online registration systems exist in which it is necessary to input, to the user's computer required information in a format specified by each vendor.
Furthermore, to check the using status of software, such as the number of times the software has been started up, the conventional method is to send users individual inquiries, thereby requiring a high cost and a long time to check.
Thus, to complete conventional user registrations, a user has to input similar information each time he or she purchases a product. Therefore, the user is required to perform a difficult and/or tedious operation and pay postage to send a registration form, etc. whereas the merits and necessity of the individual information seem to be insignificant to the user. On the other hand, the vendor has to pay costs required to, for example, input hand-written information by the user on the registration form. This process also takes a long time in processing user registration information into practically effective user registration information. There also has been an increasing cost with an increasing number of users.
Furthermore, the conventional method of checking the using status has the problem that it is costly and takes a long time, and is hard to appropriately use the check results for services. From the users' view points, the merits and necessity of their cooperation in answering inquiries are not clear to them.